Lynne Rossetto Kasper's first book, published in 1992, is one of my favorites. Called The Splendid Table, it's a tour of Italy's Emilia-Romagna region and its extraordinary food (pears in balsamic vinegar with Parmigiano-Reggiano!). The book and its recipes are scholarly, fastidiously presented, and utterly delicious. Of course, since its publication, Kasper, who'd been an award-winning cooking teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota, has made The Splendid Table a public radio brand, with her now 12-year-old show of the same name and her syndicated newspaper column, "The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper."

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She has the perfect public radio voice (you know the kind I mean) — erudite, warm, and engaging. Her new book, her third, written with her producer, Sally Swift, sounds just like her, and it reflects her show's best qualities — that erudition, quirkiness, and perfect pitch for a good yarn. At the same time, it systematically addresses the central dilemma of modern life, which is how to cook the evening meal without going mad or sitting down to eat at 10 p.m.

Kasper and Swift have structured the book as a collection of fundamental principles, shortcuts, and esoterica. You'll learn how to make store-bought chicken broth taste homemade; how to measure quantities using your palm instead of a measuring spoon; that the secret to really good pasta is hurling handfuls of salt into the cooking water, as they do in Italy.

One of the neatest tricks in the book is just right, for right now: Take sweet corn, grill for five minutes, then brush with butter and roll in fresh-squeezed lime juice. Sprinkle with hot chile pepper. Your chin will drip, so practice the cantilevered torso position described by Kasper, who noted it at the El Burrito Market in St. Paul's Mexican community. And while you're washing up, noodle on what I'm guessing is Kasper's manifesto: "Food is controllable," she writes, "while most of life is not."

1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and sliced into thin rounds or 2-inch sticks

1. Pull the meat from the chicken carcass, discarding the skin and bones. Cut it into bite-size pieces.

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2. In a large bowl combine the onion, lemon zest and juice, jalapeño, chutney, mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. Fold in the chicken. Taste the mix for lemon, mayonnaise, and spice, adding more as needed. Let it stand 20 minutes to blend flavors, or refrigerate overnight.

3. To serve, blend the celery and nuts into the chicken mixture. Mound the salad at one side of a big platter. Pile up the lettuce leaves at the other side, and cluster sprigs of herbs in the center. Tuck the radishes and cucumbers next to the herbs.

4. Put a few herb leaves in the bottom of a lettuce "cup," top them with a spoonful of the salad, a slice each of radish and cucumber, and roll up.

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Related recipe: Improvising spring rolls: Vietnamese chef Mai Pham does home-style spring rolls with the remnants of a good meal. A little goes a long way with this approach. She softens rounds of rice paper in warm water, piles on fresh mint or basil with the leftovers, and rolls them into neat burrito-style packages. Vietnam's classic spring roll dipping sauce, nuoc cham, is worth making and keeping in the refrigerator. Blend to taste Asian fish sauce (nam pla or nuoc nam), lime juice, sugar, water, minced garlic, and chopped fresh chiles. Imagine dipping into this with a spring roll filled with leftover baked yams, fresh mint, and coriander. Get the idea?

Penelope Makes the Salad

With no cooking involved, this is a wonderfully sly dinner party recipe. Even the mingiest local grocery store chain (mine being the test case) carries Major Grey Chutney and a cooked chicken. The salad is tangy and citrusy, even when just mixed. Of course, the next day the flavors are even more pronounced; I greedily doubled the recipe so we could have the leftovers for lunch. And then those citrus flavors meet the crunch of the cucumbers and radishes, and the sweet, green taste of the basil. One dinner guest waved his basil leaves and said emphatically, "These are the key to the whole enterprise!" And another guest had a lovely way of summing up all the flavors: "This is the brightest food I've ever tasted."

2. Lightly film a straight-sided 12-inch sauté pan with oil, add the bacon, and set over medium-high heat. Sauté until the bacon is golden. Remove it with a slotted spoon, setting it on paper towels to drain. Pour off all but about 3 tablespoons fat from the pan.

3. Return the pan to the heat, stirring in the onions, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Reduce heat to medium. Sauté the onions until they soften and start to color, 5 to 8 minutes.

4. Blend in the garlic, cooking for 1 minute, then add the tomatoes. If using canned ones, crush them as they go into the pan. Blend in the cooked bacon. Bring the sauce to a lively bubble and cook until it is thick, 7 to 8 minutes. Stir the sauce to keep it from sticking. Remove from the heat, taste for seasoning, and cover the pan. The sauce can wait on the stovetop up to an hour. Bring it to a bubble before adding to the pasta.

5. Drop the pasta in the boiling water, cook until tender but still a little firm to the bite, drain, and turn it into a serving bowl. Toss with the 1 cup of cheese until it clings to the noodles, then toss with the sauce. Serve hot with additional cheese at the table if desired.

Related recipe: Spaghetti alla Gricia: Before the tomato took over the Italian kitchen, this pasta was made in the hills of the Abruzzo and Lazio regions. Instead of the bacon, use 1/2 pound guanciale (cured pork jowl), pancetta, or ideally, smoked pancetta. Cook as directed, adding the garlic, salt, a lot of black pepper, and a bit more red pepper flakes. Eliminate the onion and tomatoes. Just before draining the pasta, scoop out 1/2 cup of the pasta water and add it to the sauté pan. Drain the noodles, and add them to the sauté pan. Toss over medium-high heat for 30 seconds. Blend in a generous amount of grated Pecorino Romano. The pasta should taste peppery, with a good shot of hot pepper.

Penelope Cooks the Linguine

Knowing that the children — three non-omnivores, all under 12, who'd gathered at our house one Saturday night — would shun the chicken salad, I made this linguine for them, and they scarfed it up happily. The adults partook as well, and we all decided that when I make this again, I'd want to tweak the recipe by using half as much bacon and twice as much red pepper flakes: it wanted a bit less of a bacon taste, and a lot more heat. Of course, then the children wouldn't eat it.